Entities often generate and use data that is important in some way to their operations. This data can include, for example, business data, financial data, and personnel data. If this data were lost or compromised, the entity may realize significant adverse financial and other consequences. Accordingly, many entities have chosen to back up some or all of their data so that in the event of a natural disaster, unauthorized access, or other events, the entity can recover any data that was compromised or lost, and then restore that data to one or more locations, machines, and/or environments.
Systems, hardware, computer-readable media, and methods for backing up and/or restoring data may vary depending upon the nature of the computing environment in which associated applications are operating. For example, methods for backing up and restoring data generated in connection with applications running in stand-alone environments may be quite different from methods for backing up and restoring data generated in connection with applications running in clustered environments. Correspondingly, the challenges presented by operating in such environments may be different as well, and clustered environments, in particular, present some unique challenges to the backup and restoration of data.
To briefly illustrate, federated backup and restore functionality may be useful in helping to provide application-specific backup and restore operations, while also helping to ensure that backup and restore operations in a cluster environment do not impair the operation of production servers. However, an entity may prefer not to install a backup agent on every server in the cluster environment. Moreover, the entity may wish to be able to designate a particular server, or servers, in the cluster environment to be dedicated to backup and restore operations.
In light of the foregoing, it would be helpful to avoid the need to install a backup agent on all of the servers in a cluster environment. Likewise, it would be desirable for an entity to have some flexibility in terms of designating a particular server, or servers, to perform backup and/or restore operations for one or more applications operating in a cluster environment.